DEAD: Serial killer and rapist Michel Fourniret is dead. Photo: BENOIT DOPPAGNE / AFP
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Michel Fourniret (79) was sentenced in 2008 to life in prison for the murder of seven girls and young women.
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The French prosecution confirms to notice in Le Parisien that the convicted serial killer and rapist died in hospital on May 8. He was known as the “Monster of the Ardennes”.
On Saturday, Fourniret was admitted to a security hospital in Paris with breathing problems. He was placed in a coma, but never woke up again, according to the newspaper.
He is said to have struggled with his health for a long time and had Alzheimer’s. Last year he was admitted to hospital with heart problems.
The castle Sautou in Bosseval which the serial killer once owned. Today it has been converted into several apartments.
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Convicted of nine murders
In 2008, Fourniret became found guilty of murder and rape or attempted rape of seven girls and women aged 12 to 22 years.
The co-accused wife Monique Olivier was also sentenced to life imprisonment for complicity, without the possibility of parole before 28 years have passed.
The killings were committed between 1987 and 2001. It was his wife who revealed him to the police in 2004, after he was arrested for a failed kidnapping attempt.
As recently as 2018, Fourniret confessed to two more murders of women, committed between 1988 and 1990 and was sentenced to another life sentence. In 2019, the French prosecution linked another murder to Fourniret.
The youngest victim Estelle Mouzin was only nine years old when she disappeared.
There are still a number of unanswered questions, and many suspect that he has several unsolved murders on his conscience.
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